The document discusses the reuse of plastic waste in manufacturing soil bricks as an alternative to traditional clay bricks. Plastic waste is a growing problem as plastics do not degrade naturally. The study aims to use waste plastics to create bricks that can be used in construction. Bricks were created with different ratios of plastic and soil. Testing showed plastic-soil bricks with 1% plastic and 2% soil had a compressive strength of 5.12 N/mm2, meeting standards and higher than traditional clay bricks. Water absorption was also lower for plastic bricks compared to clay. The study concludes plastic bricks can help reduce waste while providing a construction material that meets standards.

1. International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 06 Issue: 04 | Apr 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
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REUSE OF PLASTICS IN SOIL BRICKS SUBSTITUTING TRADITIONAL
BRICKS
M. Brindha1, R. Jeya Kumar2, B. Karthick Kumar3, M. Mohamed Rizwan4
1Assistant professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Sethu Institute of Technology, Kariapatti,
Virudhunagar, India.
2,3,4B.E., Student, Department of Civil Engineering, Sethu Institute of Technology, Kariapatti, Virudhunagar, India.
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Abstract - One of the major issue discussed from the last
decade is high utilization of plastics and its technique, as no
such effective techniques is yet discused. So the utilization of
these waste plastics is done by manufacturing the plastic
soil bricks which will indeed pause for the scientists to
discover the effective degradation techniques for more than
about 30-40 years. In this attempt of work has been made to
manufacture the bricks by using plastics. Due to the usage of
waste plastic materials environmental pollution can be
reduced as much as possible. It is done to satisfy the
increasing demand of construction materials.
1. INTRODUCTION
Bricks are one of the oldest known building materials
dating back to 7000BC where they were first found in
southern Turkey and around Jericho. The first bricks were
sun dried mud bricks .fired bricks were found to be more
resistance to harsher weather conditions, which made
them much more reliable brick for use in permanent
building ,where mud bricks would not have been sufficient
fired bricks were also useful for absorbing any heat
generated throughout the day then releasing it at night.
During 12th century bricks were reintroduced to northern
Germany from Northern Italy. This created the brick
gothic period which was reduced style of Gothic
architecture previously very common in northern Europe.
1.1 General
Soil is a loose, unconsolidated material on the earth’s crust
and it is formed by the weathering of solid rocks. The
laterite formation was named in southern India1807, and
it was described by Francis Buchanan-Hamilton. He
named it from the Latin word “later” which means brick.
This rock can be easily cut into brick shaped blocks for
building construction. The laterite stone is rich in iron and
aluminium and it is formed in hot and wet tropical areas. A
good reservoir of laterite stone is present in the coastal
Karnataka and some norhten parts of Karnataka and also
in the northern parts of Kerala, due to which lot of
quarrying of laterite bricks takes place. In quarries while
cutting out the laterite stones with the help of cutting
machines which produces 15-20% of soil wastes which
pose a problem of disposal. The quantity of plastic waste
in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is expanding rapidly.
1.2 Chemical structure of a waste plastic (polyethylene
terephthalate) [technical news letter]9
The monomer for the production of Poly ethylene
terephthalate (PET) is ethylene teryphthalate and this
consists of the ethylene molecule (-CH2 - CH2-), two ester
molecules (-COO-), and the teryphthalate ring molecule.
The only atomic species present in PET are therefore
hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. Burning PET generates
only carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). So there is no
potential danger of harmful gas emission even when PET
is burnt but in the present work only melting of PET was
required. The structure of the PET monomer is shown
below
1.2 properties of plastic (1)
Physical properties of PET where as given in table 1
TABLE 1 -: Physical Properties of Poly Ethylene
Terephthalate
Coefficient of Thermal
Expansion
7 x 10-3 /ºC
Long Term Service
Temperature
115 - 170ºC
Melting point 260ºC
Specific Gravity 1.3 – 1.4
Water Absorption 0.07 – 0.10%

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Volume: 06 Issue: 04 | Apr 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
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2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW 1
• AUTHOR NAME :1) Ronsk shah 2) Himanshu garg
3) Parth Gandhi 4) Rashmi Patel 5) Anand
Daftardar
• JOURNAL NAME : International Journal of
Mechanical And Production Engineering, ISSN:
2320-2092,
• PUBLISHED ON : Volume- 5, Issue-10, Oct.-2017.
• The main objective of this research work is to
develop an efficient way to effectively utilize the
waste plastic .which is a great threat for the
sustainment of ecological balance and to reduce
the plastic waste which is increasing day by day.
Bad effects of plastic waste are felt throughout the
world. So, in order to solve this issue, an attempt is
done to reduce the disposal problem of plastic
waste by using plastic extruder machine.
Compression strength test was performed on the
plastic dust brick and its strength was found to be
6.66 .N/mm2 which is higher than red clay bricks
which have a compressive strength of 3-5 N/mm2.
2.2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2
• AUTHOR NAME: Priyanka Mahajan, Darshan
Girase, Dr. A. R. Lokhande.
• JOURNAL NAME: International Journal for
Research in Applied Science & Engineering
Technology (IJRASET)
• PUBLISHED ON: Volume 6 Issue I, January 2018.
A brick is building material used to make walls,
pavements and other elements in masonry construction.
Traditionally, the term brick referred to a unit composed of
clay, but it is now used to denote any rectangular units laid
in mortar. [1] This rock can be easily cut into brick shaped
blocks for building construction. The laterite stone is rich
in iron and aluminum and it is formed in hot and wet
tropical areas. A good reservoir of laterite stone is present
in the coastal Karnataka and some northern parts of
Karnataka and in the northern parts of Kerala, due to
which lot of quarrying of laterite bricks takes place. The
quantity of plastic waste in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is
expanding rapidly. This is due to rapid growth of
population, urbanization, developmental activities and
changes in life style which leading widespread littering on
the landscape.
2.3 LITERATURE REVIEW 3
• AUTHOR NAME : Mr.N.Thirugnana sambantham,
P.TharunKumar,R.Sujithra,R.Selvaraman,
P.Bharathi5
• JOURNAL NAME: International Journal of Science
and Engineering Research (IJ0SER).
• PUBLISHED ON : Vol 5 Issue 4 April -2017 .
Plastic is a non-bio-degradable substance which takes
thousands of years to decompose that creates land as well
as water pollution to the environment. The quantity of
plastic waste in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is expanding
rapidly. It is estimated that the rate of usage is double for
every 10 years. The Plastic usage is large in consumption
and one of the largest plastic wastes is polyethylene (PE).
The utilization of earth based clay material resulted in
resource depletion and environmental degradation. As
amount of clay required for brick is huge, in this project
these waste plastics are effectively utilized in order to
reduce the land space required to dump these wastes. This
creates the prevention from various harmful diseases.
Polyethylene (PE) bags are cleaned and added with fine
aggregate at various ratios to obtain high strength bricks
that possess thermal and sound insulation properties. This
is one of the best ways to avoid the accumulation of plastic
waste. It also helps to conserve energy, reduce the overall
cost of construction andhence in this project, an attemptis
made to manufacture the plastic sand bricks by utilizing
the waste plastics.
• Key words :
Plastic waste, low density polyethylene, polyethylene
properties, plastic sand brick, bricks
3. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS
3.1 COMPRESSIVE TEST
Compressive strength test on bricks are carried out to
determine the load carrying capacity of bricks under
compression. This test is carried out with the help of
compression testing machine.
1) Procedure of Compressive Strength Test on Bricks
1. 1. Place the specimen with flat face s horizontal and
mortar filled face facing upwards between plates of the
testing machine.
2. 2. Apply load axially at a uniform rate of 14 N/mm2 (140
kg/cm2) per minute till failure occurs and note maximum
load at failure.
3.

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4. 3. The load at failure is maximum load at which the
specimen fails to produce any further increase in the
indicator reading on the testing machine.
Fig -1: compression strength sample
3.2 WATER ABSORPTION TEST
Water absorption test on bricks are conducted to
determine durability property of bricks such as degree of
burning, quality and behavior of bricks in weathering.
A brick with water absorption of less than 7% provides
better resistance to damage by freezing. The degree of
compactness of bricks can be obtained by water
absorption test, as water is absorbed by pores in bricks.
The water absorption by bricks increase with increase in
pores. So, the bricks, which have water absorption less
than 3 percent can be called as vitrified.
This test provides the percentage of water absorption of
bricks and procedure of the same is discussed below.
3.2.1 Apparatus
A sensitive balance capable of weighing within 0.1% of the
mass of the specimen and ventilated oven
3.2.2 Procedure of Water Absorption Test
1. Dry the specimen in a ventilated oven at a
temperature of 105 °C to 115°C till it attains
substantially constant mass.
2. Cool the specimen to room temperature and obtain its
weight (M1) specimen too warm to touch shall not be
used for this purpose.
3. Immerse completely dried specimen in clean water at
a temperature of 27+2°C for 24 hours.
4. Remove the specimen and wipe out any traces of
water with damp cloth and weigh the specimen after
it has been removed from water (M2).
Fig -2: Water absorption test sample
3.3 HARDNESS TEST
In this test, a scratch is made on brick surface with the
help of a finger nail. If no impression is left on the surface,
the brick is r sufficiently hard.
4. RESULT AND DISCUSSIONS
4.1 COMPRESSIVE STRENGTH TEST
Specimens are to be tested and their results are to be
tabulated in the below table.
TABLE 2 -: Compression Test For Brick Samples
Sl.no Percentage
of plastic
(%)
Percentage
of Quarry
dust (%)
Average
compressive
strength
(N/mm2)
1 1 2 5.12
2 1 3 4.23
3 Conventional brick 3.15
Fig -3: Compressive strength graph
4.2 WATER ABSORPTION TEST
Specimens are to be tested and their results are to be
tabulated in the below table.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
plastic-soil
bricks(1:2)
plastic-soil
bricks(1:3)
Conventional
bricks
N/mm2

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Volume: 06 Issue: 04 | Apr 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
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TABLE 3 -: Water Absorption Test For Brick Samples
Sl.no Percentage of
plastic (%)
Percentage
of quarry
dust (%)
Water
absorption (%)
1 1 2 1.02
2 1 3 1.10
3 Conventional Brick 3.15
Fig -3: Compressive strength graph
5. CONCLUSION
From the addition of percentage of wastes in the bricks,
we would like to conclude that, The waste that are added
in the bricks are quite increased in percentage, will tends
to reduce the compressive strength of bricks from the
minimum standards of compressive strength 5.12 N/mm2
so if the percentage of wastes added ore quite increased it
should have are strict in limitation of size 1/10th of
normal bricks. By following the above standards will
totally reduce the “waste plastic materials” from the
environment.
REFERENCES
1. 1) Ronsk shah 2) Himanshu garg 3) Parth
Gandhi 4) Rashmi Patel 5) Anand Daftardar
International Journal of Mechanical And
Production Engineering, ISSN: 2320-2092,
Volume- 5, Issue-10, Oct.-2017.
2. 1) Priyanka Mahajan, 2) Darshan Girase,
3) Dr. A. R. Lokhande, International Journal for
Research in Applied Science & Engineering
Technology (IJRASET),Volume 6 Issue I,
January 2018.
3. 1)Mr.N.Thirugnanasambantham,2)P.TharunK
umar,3)R.Sujithra,4)R.Selvaraman,5)P.Bharat
hi, International Journal of Science and
Engineering Research (IJ0SER), Vol 5 Issue 4
April -2017 .
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
plastic-soil
brick(1:2)
plastic-soil
brick(1:3)
conventional
bricks
Percentage(%)